Video 9:13
Six Australians named as prime suspects in Peru murder

Adam Harvey
Mon 1 Jul 2013, 8:18 PM AEST

Six Australians have been named as prime suspects in the 2012 murder of a doorman of an apartment block in Peru and, while they say they've done nothing wrong, a Peruvian judge says they have a case to answer and he could issue an extradition notice at any time.

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: A terrifying legal deadline is loom tonight for six young Australians who've been named as prime suspects in the murder of an apartment block doorman in Peru. The Australians were given until today to return to Lima to face charges of homicide, but they've refused to go. A Peruvian judge has ruled they have a case to answer and the court could issue an extradition notice at any time, meaning the six could be listed as international fugitives under an Interpol red notice. The Australians say they've done nothing wrong and that the case against them is murky and at best circumstantial. Adam Harvey reports.

JESSICA VO: South America, we just looked into it further and further and found some amazing places that we'd love to visit. Machu Picchu, Iguazu Falls and also Carnival in Brazil.

HUGH HANLON: The trip of a lifetime. Met so many good people. It was really special to be able to share it with me brother and Jess.

JESSICA VO: I'd actually beaten ovarian cancer in September of that year. Hugh actually surprised me for my birthday at the time.

ADAM HARVEY, REPORTER: They were six young Australians on a huge adventure.

In January 2012, the friends took a long bus ride from the Peruvian Andes to the capital Lima where their journey took an awful turn.

JESSICA VO: We decided we really needed a break from the outside work, considering we had just gotten back from a four-day hike. So we booked this two-bedroom apartment where we could just have hot showers. We had our own double beds and just relax on the beach.

ADAM HARVEY: The Australians checked in here at midday. Working on the door that day was 45-year-old Lino Rodriguez Vilchez.

JESSICA VO: We spoke with him only when we said hello. We had no real contact except for the boys asking for directions.

ADAM HARVEY: They went out to buy food and returned to their apartment around 3 pm.

JESSICA VO: Once we arrived in the room, we started unpacking our groceries. Hugh and Tom had heard something that I hadn't heard because obviously there's six of us and we walk into an apartment and go our separate ways.

HUGH HANLON: Just heard a thud and it was enough to look out the window to see the body on the ground, which is pretty horrific.

ADAM HARVEY: It was the doorman, Mr Rodriguez Vilchez. One bystander towed local media that he'd fallen from the roof of the apartment building.

The police who called to apartment 1,501 initially treated the death as suicide.

HUGH HANLON: We had the police and investigators, people in lab coats sort of coming through in and out of our room over the next sort of ...

TOM HANLON: We moved in - out to the front balcony which is looking over the water to sort of try and escape what we'd all just seen. Some of us chose not to look. So we all sort of went to the balcony to try and - we put our music on and try and thought, "Well we're here now. This has got nothing to do with us. Let's try and forget about this horrific thing that we've just seen."

JESSICA VO: The following day we had a visit from the last police officer who came in and we were supposed to be providing our official statements. At that time we felt a little bit uneasy because he was questioning if we knew anything more, which obviously we didn't, and that's when alarm bells started ringing.

ADAM HARVEY: The Australian stayed one more night and left Lima as planned to continue their holiday.

As the family of Lino Rodriguez Vilchez mourned their loss, they refused to accept his death was suicide.

The doorman's brother, Wimber Rodriguez Vilchez, began a public campaign to reopen the investigation.

Wimber Rodriguez spoke to 7.30 from Lima. He highlighted evidence that appeared inconsistent with a suicide. He's convinced the Australians are guilty.

WIMBER RODRIGUEZ, BROTHER OF VICTIM (voiceover translation): The autopsy or the post-mortem shows that my brother was covered with bruises and marks all over the front and back and on his head and on the ribs and his upper torso.

ADAM HARVEY: He claimed to have found a witness who'd heard a commotion on the 15th floor and he became convinced of another version of events.

WIMBER RODRIGUEZ (voiceover translation): They were making an excessive amount of noise in apartment 1,501 where the six Australians were staying. My brother went upstairs to get them to turn down the noise and there was a misunderstanding, as he only spoke Spanish and they only spoke English, and they hit my brother and threw him over from the 15th floor.

ADAM HARVEY: A new police investigation concluded that Lino Rodriguez Vilchez may have been pushed to his death.

A Peruvian television report labelled the Australians as killers.

PERUVIAN REPORTER (voiceover translation): He was thrown out of an apartment by a group of drunk Australians who left the country the following day.

ADAM HARVEY: It said they'd pulled the doorman into their apartment, bashed him and thrown him out a window.

HARRISON GEIER: Starting getting Facebook messages rolling in, lots of them in Spanish, the first of which I probably brushed off and ignored. But afterwards I got a link to a Peruvian television segment, which you could see - you didn't need to - I didn't need to speak Spanish in order to know what it was about.

PERUVIAN REPORTER (voiceover translation): These are the faces of those implicated in this murder.

JESSICA VO: It made me feel sick. It really did. I don't know how anyone could ever think that we could do something like that.

ADAM HARVEY: The Australians deny any involvement in the doorman's death. They say there was no excessive noise, Mr Rodriguez Vilchez never came to their room and there was no confrontation, let alone a mid-afternoon murder in the public atrium of an apartment block.

JESSICA VO: It's a complete lie. I don't know how they could possibly have that type of scenario in their head because there's no evidence to suggest that that is what happened.

ADAM HARVEY: The families of the Australians have been battling the allegations for almost 12 months. They've hired Peruvian lawyers and commissioned their own forensic investigator who disputes the police theory that Lino Rodriguez Vilchez was thrown to his death.

ROB PILAT, PARENT: From a physics point of view, he has shown that what has been assumed by the police from how the body has fallen couldn't have happened.

ADAM HARVEY: One parent, Rob Pilat, has gone twice to court hearings in Lima. During one of the hearings he sat beside the doorman's brother.

ROB PILAT: I'm past anger. I most probably feel sorrow for him, that he can't see that we couldn't have done it. I - gobsmacked. So I don't understand how he can't see that.

ADAM HARVEY: The Australians have been named by an investigating judge as prime suspects in the homicide of Mr Rodriguez Vilchez and they've been ordered to return to Lima this week.

JESSICA VO: At the moment we have been subpoenaed to appear in Peru the first, second and third of July in which we have applied for a waiver in order for us to be able to give our statements in Australia via video link if possible.

ADAM HARVEY: They've been threatened with an Interpol arrest warrant if they don't show.

Would you go if the court ordered you to?

TOM HANLON: I don't see why we couldn't do it from here.

JESSICA VO: The fear of going to Peru is that we are not going to be given a fair trial.

WIMBER RODRIGUEZ (voiceover translation): The only thing I want is justice is served and that the six Australians come back to my country to make their statements personally. We're going to fight for as long as it takes and we're not going to allow them to get away with it.